J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by AllyG

Tony,
As long as you don't eat out and you actually cook, you should be able to spend a lot less than £800 on food and drink for 4 of you. And as long as you don't go in school holidays you should be able to get a self-catering apartment for 4 for less than £700.

For me, one of the main bonuses of going self-catering is that we can go back to the apartment for lunch, so I always get a ski in/gondola out apartment. I reckon we save a fortune like that.

I was in Meribel in January and I was in a mountain restaurant that wouldn't even give me a free carafe of tap water! We were there for lunch because we were ski-ing with the Ski Club of GB, instead of going back to the apartment. And lunch in those sort of places costs at least 20 euros each.

Chris, try this for ski resorts within one hour of Geneva (I assume this is what you wanted):

http://www.j2ski.com/ski_resorts/Airports/Geneva.html

Chris,
I think they're on the following page.

I suppose it also depends on how close you live to the channel ports, or the tunnel, as compared with how easy/expensive it is to get to an airport with flights in the right direction. Obviously if you lived in the north of Scotland driving to France would be pretty expensive/take a very long time!

People always seem to forget the cost of getting to the airport in the U.K. but they can mount up to quite a bit, especially if you have to stay overnight in a hotel beforehand and pay for airport parking, or get a long distance taxi. A taxi to the London airports from where I live costs £250 one way!

Far Queue wrote:Hi Jo.

A bit more info may be helpful. What sort of trip are you looking to arrange? Hotel, Chalet SC etc.? Do you have a preference for partners, male/female, age range etc.? Preferences for travel?

Welcome to the forum btw :D

Hi Jo :D
I agree with what Far Queue said, and also I think you need to say how much it's going to cost. Some people like budget self-catering holidays and others like going to luxurious chalets. But pretty much everyone wants to know how much it's going to cost before they get involved.

Far Queue wrote:Ally, the only thing which has always put me off the non direct train is the change of station in Paris. It does mean having to hump all your gear across on the metro, or paying an extra charge for a taxi.

Which way are you going to transfer? Do you have a price for a taxi.

Far Queue, I bought myself a single ticket for the direct, non-stop train from St Pancras to Bourg as soon as the tickets became available, which cost me £96 8)

However, I didn't like to say so because I didn't want to be too smug about it :lol:

There are still a few direct tickets left for Saturday 12th January but they now cost £169 single from St Pancras to Bourg - so they've gone up by £69. Train tickets are like plane tickets, they price them according to availability so it's a good idea to buy them as early as you can.

The direct train leaves St Pancras at 10 a.m. and arrives in Bourg at 18-51 (remember you go forward an hour to French time). If you're only going to Moutiers (for Courchevel etc.) you get there earlier at 18-12 and the journey only takes 7 hours and 12 minutes.

But I have changed in Paris several times, and the only time I had a problem was when my daughter and I were a bit overtired after a brilliant week of ski-ing and we went to the wrong platform - but we soon realized our mistake and found the right one. I've never tried taking a taxi, as we were told the RER is just as quick as a taxi.

The Eurostar comes in to Paris Nord and it's a huge station and you have to find your way to the RER line D and take either D2 towards Melun or D4 towards Malesherbes. It's all signposted just like the London underground.

What I did was buy a carnet of 10 RER/Metro tickets at the Eurostar office in St Pancras which lasted me a couple of years, and each ticket only cost me something like £1 (far cheaper than the London underground). I imagine Eurostar are still selling these. The first time I changed in Paris I had to cope with the French ticket machine and although I managed it (luckily they have an option in English) it was a bit of a struggle and also a waste of time.

Officially it takes 25 minutes to get from Paris Nord to Paris Lyon on the RER but they do say to allow an hour between trains in case one gets held up somewhere.

We've never had a problem dragging suitcases in the French stations, but then we get to St Pancras on the underground anyway and it's much the same. However, we don't bring skis with us and I have a little trolley suitcase for my ski boots.

That's one reason why I am going to use the Skis2U service - so that I don't have to drag skis around on the underground.

And the French high speed train, the TGV, is a most impressive train. The ones I have been on are really long, very comfortable, double deckers with several different restaurants/cafes down the train. The only tricky thing about using them is that you have to remember to 'compost' your ticket in the machine before you get on the train. They have signs up saying 'composter votre billet' which means put it in this machine which officially punches it with (presumably - I've never really looked) the date and time and station.

Have you read what it says on here about it?

http://www.j2ski.com/ski_resorts/Austria/Bad_Hofgastein.html

As you will have gathered from the above post, Far Queue is giving Brooksy a lift in his car from the U.K. to the chalet and back :D

We have 3 cars so far driving over. I am going out by train and flying back, and pretty much everyone else is flying out and back.

The French train company released it's winter train time-table on Thursday, and I've been looking at it. At the moment you can book up to the weekend before we go, so up to the 5th/6th January. You can book on here:

http://www.raileurope.co.uk/

I have discovered that you can buy a return ticket from London to Bourg St Maurice for only £126-50 if you go out on the Saturday and change stations in Paris, and come back a week later on the Sunday, again changing in Paris.

I think this is an amazingly good price. It does actually beat flying on cost (if you're travelling from London or Ashford), by the time you add in the price of transfers and ski carriage (because you can take snow gear on the train free of charge).

You would, of course, have to stay in a hotel in Bourg, like I'm doing, but you could get 7 1/2 days on the snow this way. If you went back to Paris on the sleeper on Sunday night you could get 8 days ski-ing/boarding, but they haven't released the time-table yet for the sleeper train and it does tend to work out much more expensive than going back during the day.

Here are the times of the trains:

07-31 depart St Pancras on Saturday, arrive Bourg 17-02 total journey time 8 hours 31 minutes, change stations in Paris from Paris Nord to Paris Lyon.

Return on Sunday, several possible trains, all changing once in Paris, and taking 9 hours and 30 minutes:
09-13 arrive St Pancras 17-39
10-16 arrive St Pancras 18-30
14-09 arrive St Pancras 22-39

I reckon this is a very good price, but I imagine it will go up.

When the sleeper time-table is released I will post this up as well, not just for those considering coming on this holiday with us, but for everyone travelling from London (or Ashford) to this region of France to ski/snowboard.